Introduction and state of the art

There is currently a debate over how to structure education under the principle of inclusiveness and non-exclusivity. This debate seeks to promote personalised education that embraces diversity, respects individuality, and seeks to bring out the cognitive and emotional capabilities of students. For this purpose, it is advisable to create learning processes aimed at fostering the capabilities of each and every student, placing the emphasis on the classroom (Harris, 2011). To this end, efforts are being made to promote conditions where everyone feels involved in learning and co-responsible for the development of their competencies to achieve transformational learning (Carrington & Selva, 2010). Likewise, knowledge of the learning ecology is necessary to encourage students’ involvement by promoting autonomy and offering strategies to develop the self-regulation of learning (Coll, 2013; González-Sanmamed et al., 2018; Martínez-Rodríguez & Benítez-Corona, 2020). Thus, the aim is to configure the learning process by involving the processes and contexts that offer learning opportunities and help understand capabilities, needs, motivations, abilities and interests. Social-emotional learning is at the heart of inclusive approaches in basic education. It spans not only cognitive and intellectual aspects but also affective, social and moral elements to equip students with useful attitudes for life (UNESCO, 2013). Social-emotional education programmes work at the individual and group levels in the classroom environment. At the individual level, they increase social skills and assertive conflict resolution skills through direct instruction (Izard, 2002). At the group level, they create safe, affective learning environments through teacher training (Hawkins et al., 2004; Portnow et al., 2018).

Social-emotional education aims to offer students the necessary conditions for them to become engaged in their own teaching and learning process in a cohesive classroom environment. Thus, a learning-friendly classroom environment is the ideal place for children’s integral development, where attention is paid to academic, emotional, and social development (De-Pedro et al., 2016). In this context, there is also a need to foster autonomy and communication. The empirical evidence shows that developing autonomy helps students participate in their own learning and become involved in the functional learning process (Díez-Gutiérrez & Díaz-Nafría, 2018). The empirical evidence also shows that the development of social-emotional skills improves the ability to communicate and reason about conflict, encouraging the search for satisfactory solutions to ensure peaceful coexistence (Aber et al., 2003).

A meta-analysis of 213 articles exploring social-emotional intervention programs confirms the improvements in participants’ emotional and social skills and attitudes when compared with non-participants. These improvements include positive attitudes towards oneself, others and school in general, as well as fewer behavioural problems and better academic performance (Durlak et al., 2011). The understanding of one’s own and others’ emotions (Salisch et al., 2013) and the ability to regulate one’s own behaviour develop rapidly at an early age (Eisenberg & Sulik, 2012). Therefore, childhood may be the ideal stage to implement these programs to prevent aggressive behaviours from getting engrained and becoming the common way of relating to others. Using aggressiveness as a way of relating to others may be linked to cognitive distortions that lead to the justification of this type of behaviour and to a belief in aggressiveness to maintain one’s status within the group (Bandura, 1999).

Materials and methods

Results

First, the Mann–Whitney U test was performed to compare the scores for the control and experimental groups.

In the pre-test phase, the results indicate that there are significant differences in aggressiveness and emotional instability between the two groups. Specifically, the experimental group has higher scores of emotional instability and aggressiveness than the control group. In these cases, the effect size is small (Cliff’s Delta: emotional instability=.151; physical and verbal aggressiveness=.227) (Table 1) (Cohen, 1988).

It is observed that in the initial situation of both groups, there were significant differences in emotional instability and physical and verbal aggressiveness. However, the experimental group had higher scores of aggressiveness and emotional instability (Table 1; Figure 1).

The results of the Wilcoxon signed-rank test (WSRT) for the experimental group and the control group are now presented separately.

Table 2 shows the results for the experimental group in the pre-test and post-test phases. Significant differences between the pre-test and post-test scores may be observed for emotional instability and physical and verbal aggression. The results show that after the application of the programme, emotional instability and aggressiveness were significantly lower (Figure 2). The effect size according to the PS_dep test of Grisson and Kim is in the medium-to-large range (.626 and .578) (Cohen, 1988).

The situation is different for the control group. The results show that there are no significant differences between the pre-test and post-test phases in physical and verbal aggressiveness (Table 3; Figure 2). However, there are significant differences in emotional instability. The emotional instability scores reported by the children increased over time. That is, the scores in the post-test phase are higher (pre-test: M=22.3 and SD=4.5; post-test: M=23.3 and SD=4.5; p=.015). In this case, the effect size is medium (Cohen, 1988).

Discussion and conclusions

The aim of this research is to analyse the impact of a classroom-based social-emotional education programme and its effects on aggressiveness and emotional instability in childhood. This social-emotional intervention programme aims at teaching emotional awareness (emotional knowledge, expression and self-regulation) and self-control, with an emphasis on responsibility, autonomy, self-concept and self-motivation, as well as empathy and moral values. The goal is to promote effective problem coping strategies to solve problems in a responsible and effective way.

In general, the results show the effectiveness of applying the programme, by confirming a decrease in the aggressiveness and emotional instability of the experimental group as a whole. Social-emotional learning is based on the knowledge of teachers about their students. This knowledge on the part of teachers lays the foundations to offer students personalised learning through reflection upon their own and others’ emotions, self-regulation and self-control, providing understandable learning scenarios so that students can deal with them responsibly and autonomously. This helps achieve one of the indicators for global education monitoring –that of learning to be and learning to live together– through the education involving affective, social and moral factors, advocated by UNESCO (2013).

To form the control and experimental groups, similarity in terms of gender, age, level of studies and the conditions of the boys and girls was taken into account, although the class teacher had to agree to teach the programme for the class to be included in the experimental group. However, the initial situation (pre-test phase) of the experimental and control groups was not the same. As observed, the two groups had significant differences in aggressiveness and emotional instability in the pre-test phase. We face the paradox that the experimental group had higher rates of aggressiveness and emotional instability than the control group in the pre-test phase. Therefore, the first hypothesis, regarding similar conditions in the control and experimental groups, could not be fully tested. As shown in the Results section, the experimental group, as a whole, displayed higher scores in terms of aggressiveness and emotional instability.

However, after the implementation of the programme, both aggressiveness and emotional instability in the experimental group decreased significantly, and both variables increased slightly in the control group such that significant differences in emotional instability were observed. Thus, the second hypothesis, which posited a decrease in aggressiveness and emotional instability in the experimental group after the application of the programme, is confirmed. As shown, the emotional education programme contributed to achieving a significant decrease in aggressiveness and emotional instability in childhood. The two variables are closely related, as shown by previous research (Mestre et al., 2010; Palmen et al., 2011).

The results provide three conclusions. First, one of the strongest complaints amongst teachers concerns the high rates of aggressiveness amongst schoolchildren. This study shows that emotional education contributes to reducing aggressiveness, given that students are better prepared to use solution strategies that are distinct from mere aggression (Aber et al., 2003). An educational environment that is concerned with fostering the co-responsibility of students, promoting alternatives and skills to tackle the resolution of problems autonomously and responsibly, whilst respecting everybody’s interests, provides a dynamic, non-aggressive environment with smooth communication and a concern for learning (González-Sanmamed et al., 2018).

Second, in line with previous research, we observe that aggressiveness and emotional instability are related to one another and feed off each other (Mestre et al., 2010; Palmen et al., 2011). Both variables induce personal vulnerability by being linked to social isolation and the inability to establish lasting positive relationships with peers (Palmen et al., 2011). The social-emotional education programme develops the necessary emotional competencies aimed at building emotional awareness and self-control, as well as social awareness and responsible, autonomous conflict resolution, seeking the benefit of all (Taylor et al., 2017). These scenarios develop co-responsibility and the ability to deal with tasks autonomously.

Third, it is confirmed that concern for teacher training and the creation of a space for teachers to voice their concerns and speak about classroom conflicts creates a calm environment that has a bearing on individual well-being. Students who perceive smooth relationships between different teachers, as well as between teachers and other groups in the educational setting (e.g. the students and their families), are more likely to feel that they belong at school and to become involved in school and classroom life, which tends to improve their co-existence, as well as their performance (Cerdá et al., 2019).

In short, it may be concluded that education policies and teachers should be sensitive to applying social-emotional education programmes (Jones et al., 2010) and that education authorities should provide teachers with the means to implement these social-emotional education programmes in the formal educational environment.

This study has several limitations. The first limitation refers to the distribution of the control and experimental groups, which was based on the fact that the teachers accepted the implementation of the programme in the classroom, attended the training course and agreed to put it into practice in the classroom. This principle may be a limitation in itself because the teachers who are willing to be involved in the programme, may have different interests and motivations from the teachers in the control group. The teachers in the control group only participated in the evaluation of students in the pre-test and post-test phase. In the future, studies could be designed to distribute the experimental and control groups randomly. This could give a more complete picture of the scope of the intervention and the implementation of the programme with a perspective towards generalisation. A second limitation relates to the fact that the evaluation in the pre-test and post-test phases was based on self-reports. The children completed questionnaires that constituted the variables under analysis. It is plausible that the results could be strengthened by using several sources of information or longitudinal sources, which would have enabled analysis of different moments in the development of the same population.

In terms of future lines of research, in reference to the analyses that were conducted, which focused on groups of children, they could also be conducted with moderating variables, to help observe the subgroups that benefit most from the application of the programme. Seemingly, children who show the greatest aggressiveness at the beginning of the application of social-emotional programmes tend to benefit most from these interventions (Bierman et al., 2010).

With regard to the environment where the programme was implemented, the study was applied in the school context. In future research, this could be complemented by the family environment. The involvement of families in the process of schooling children in coordination with schools has positive effects on children’s development. Although the involvement of teachers in programmes to reduce impulsiveness and aggressive behaviour seems to be more effective than that of families (Malti et al., 2011), it cannot be ignored that, together, families and teachers can enhance these effects. (1)